Žensko ime odpora / The Female Name of Resistance

Hall of Beef Memory Conflicts

Evening Programme
__
18:00 vernissage with co-curator Helena Verdel
19:00 discussion event with Katharina Morawek, Dastan Jasim and others.

A democratic society needs a democratic culture of memory. How are marginalised narratives and narratives of resistance addressed? Which narratives of history support the ongoing existence of forms of dominance and exploitation? How do such phenomena relate to the political situation in which we find ourselves today? The event “Memory Conflicts” traces anti-fascist narratives that are often suppressed and forgotten in post-Nazi Austria.

These questions are investigated in the exhibition “Žensko ime odpora / The Female Name of Resistance” (23/04–08/05/2024), which commemorates women who were a part of the resistance against the Nazis. In March 1943, 80 years ago, with the Second World War raging, the Slovenian Anti-Fascist Women’s Front (Antifašistična fronta žena) formed a Carinthian branch in Eisenkappel/Železna Kapla. Drawing on this, curators Helena Verdel, Vida Obid, Elisabeth Rausch and Elisabeth Holzinger conceptualised an exhibition, commissioned by the WerkStattMuseum, about the resistance of the Slovenian women in Carinthia in connection with further examples of resistance against National Socialism across Austria.

The opening will be accompanied by a podium discussion on the anti-fascist politics of memory and fascist continuities. For the finissage, a feminist-partisan choir intervention into urban conflicts will take place under the title “Choirs of Resistance”.

Curated by Sara T. Huber and Markus Gönitzer.

Žensko ime odpora / The Female Name of Resistance

Image: Zsa Zsa

About the guests

Žensko ime odpora / The Female Name of Resistance

Memory Conflicts | Focus Programme
23.4.24

Dastan Jasim is a political scientist and Associate Fellow at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA). Her research focuses on Kurdish Studies, Democratisation & Decentralisation, Political Sociology, Security Policy in and around Kurdistan and Harmonisation of Survey Data. She recently completed her doctorate on the topic of "Civic Culture without a State: Conceptualising Kurdish Civic Culture in Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria between State Control and Resistance."

Katharina Morawek is Managing Director at the Centre for Arts and Cultural Theory (ZKK) at the University of Zurich and the Zurich University of the Arts.
As a curator and organisational developer, she works with cultural institutions on issues of social diversity and radical democratic dialogue. In 2023, she co-authored the study "Auslegeordnung Erinnerungskultur Stadt Zürich". Together with Lisa Bolyos, she published "Diktatorpuppe zerstört, Schaden gering. Kunst und Geschichtspolitik im Postnazismus", published by Mandelbaum Verlag in 2012.

Helena Verdel is an Austrian-Slovenian political scientist and theatre scholar. She has published numerous works on Austrian and European contemporary history, particularly on feminist topics. She is co-curator of the exhibition Žensko ime odpora/ The Female Name of the Resistance, board member of the Association of Carinthian Partisans/ Zveza koroških partizanov and co-editor of Spurensuche. Narrated History of the Carinthian Slovenes.